In reply to:

Car Stereo Review reviewing the empeg


There are a couple of quibbles with this:

1 - "I'm thinking the reason that the rotary knob is on the right side is because the EC 6Gb is made in Britain, bastion of right-hand-drive cars"

Oh, for God's sake. It's an extra 6 flaming inches. Does it really matter? As a point of information, I use the buttons more than I use the knob anyway.

2 - "The manager software missed some of the song titles I downloaded to the player"

More likely the tags weren't created correctly (i.e. user error). I rather suspect that if Emplode did this on a regular basis it would have been the subject of much discussion here.

3 - "Maximum unclipped output was 1.3 volts; while certainly workable, many folks prefer a higher voltage these days. (The company rates maximum output level at 3.6 volts without clipping.)"

Sounds like the WAV wasn't normalised before it was encoded.

4 - "Using test files coded at 192 kbps, frequency response was good, but there was some high-frequency droop."

Err. Yes. What do you expect? MP3 is a lossy encoding mechanism. Earlier in the review he states that he can hear the difference at low bit rates, so why bother doing the lab measurements on (relatively) low bit rate files?


As for calling it the "EC", is the concept of company and product going under the same name really that difficult to grasp?


All in all though, an interesting review.

It is amusing to see that when reviewed in computing magazines the quality of the audio side of the unit is not commented on, and yet here, when reviewed in an audio magazine, there isn't any appreciation of the computing (ripping, normalisation, encoding etc.) side of the equation.

The more I think about this, the more I believe that if Empeg/Rio/WhateverThey'reCalledToday want to sell to the mass market, they need to produce a booklet which goes into the dos and don'ts of MP3s, explains bit rates, ripping, normalisation and explains quality and high frequency dropoff and also provides instructions on getting the best quality music into the Empeg.

Nick.

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